Blood Bowl - ** f13 League, Season #3 **

[Ruvaldt]

Yeah, I'm living someplace new this season and have to sort out the router issue with my roommate.  Whenever I can corner him I'll get the admin/password for it and forward my ports.  I hadn't thought about it because I've played around 20+ games over the past two weeks here.  Should be fixed on my end soon if it isn't on Sir T's.

[Falconeer]

Cool, Ruvaldt. Remember, you have about a week to do that.

[eldaec]

Offsidhes 1 - 1 Silver Horde

You wouldn't guess who was the vet team if you watched the replay.

Offsidhes take Jordell Freshbreeze as Inducement, win the toss, and kick off. One tactical error on the lineup, the Offsidhes forget that Norse is Frenzy heavy and leave one man too near the touchline, so first turn we have our first injured elf as the Silver Horde dump a Lineman unceremoniously into the crowd, he's only badly hurt though and will be back for the next game. Meanwhile the SIlver horde take control of the LoS start to cage up. The drive is fairly stamdard stuff from there on, cage slowly works its way up the pitch, Offsidhes can't find a way in and concede on turn 8, despite a near calamity on the last turn when Jordell Freshbreeze finds his way into the cage via dodge/sidestep. Offsidhes catcher Elendril Mourningstar is stretchered off with a smashed ankle along the way.

Second half starts with Offsidhes recieving a touchback. Horde Lineman, Truckle the Uncivil is quickly taken off hurt, but the Horde still outnumber Offsidhes thanks to a couple of KOs. Offsidhes move the ball around looking for a way through and the ball changes hands a couple of times. Generally as a result of good play by the elfs and drunken stumbling by the Norse side, who are outmanuevered despite their numbers advantage. Eventually the Elfs break away but are caught by Horde Ulfwerener Caledb the Ripper who had hung back as a safety. A Melee results just yards from the goalline, but despite numerical advantage the Horde can't stop the ball going out of play, Jordell Freshbreeze's blodge+side step stopping the Norse side getting control. The crowd toss the ball around amongst themselves for what seems like an eternity before it eventually lands kindly for the Elfs and Suicidal Idiot scores for Offsidhes.

Three turns left for a final drive, and it starts snowing. The second elf catcher is blitzed, and goes down with a smashed collar bone. Horde commit to the right wing, and as turn 14 ends they are a couple of ranks behind the line of scrimmage. Offsidhes have 7 elfs left to face the 11 norse, but Silver Horde need to travel 15 squares in two turns to claim the win. Jordell Fucking Freshbreeze has landed in the cage AGAIN, but this time gets KO'd (fuck you Jordell Freshbreeze). On turn 15 Horde use a handoff to cage half way into the Offsidhes half. Offsidhes manage to get two tackle zones on the carrier, and another elf just in front of the cage. LAst turn that leaves Silver Horde with two choices, Ronald Saveloy can handoff to waiting Caleb the Ripper (Wolf), who can then run into the elf in front and try a 2 die frenzy block to run in the TD, or Ronald Saveloy can hold the ball, the rest of the team can wipe the two elfs, but leave Ronald with 2 GFIs to reach the endzone. Silver Horde are out of rerolls and its snowing. As it has been long established that Nuffle fucking hates GFIs, the Horde go with the Werewolf hand-off, need a 4, 5, or 6, but roll a 2 and the game ends like a bitch.



I've missed out a lot of the stupid shit I always do wrong in blood bowl from this description.

Apart from the frenzy thing Kail played well - really well for a first game against living opposition, I kind of feel bad that he's missing both his catchers next time out.

[Kail]

You wouldn't guess who was the vet team if you watched the replay!

That was literally an act of God that prevented me from losing.
Replay here

Positioned my guys stupidly and lost one right off the bat, pushed into the bleachers by frenzy.  Lost a few others, missed a bunch of rolls, and couldn't stop the Horde from scoring in the first half.  Flubbed my pickup on turn 8, though I'm not sure it would have mattered.

Thought I'd make it up in the second half, and things started promisingly, but I lost track of time and left my ball carrier exposed, causing him to get thoroughly stomped.  Horde missed the pickup roll, though, and after some dodging I managed to take it to their one yard line, where I got blitzed and fell.  Horde grabbed the ball, but missed the pass, and the ball went out of bounds.  Bounced back in right next to my thrower, by an amazing stroke of luck, and I tossed it up to a lineman who ran it in, tying at 1-1.

Horde still had three turns to score, and I was down four players, so I thought I was finished, but fortunately a freak blizzard ( ) erupted in the last five minutes of the match and stopped the Horde from throwing or running and I was able to stall them long enough to eke out a tie (though not long enough to prevent Jordell Freshbreeze from decorating some cleats).

Took a lot of casualties, though.  Of note, both of my runners are permanently crippled now (both, ironically, would have lost 1 move, but I blew an apothecary on one and he got away with -1 str).

[Strazos]

Personally, I would take -1mv before -1str...you can still run the ball with less mv, but you can forget about blocking.

[eldaec]

I've just done the maths and managed to assure myself that the hand-off was the right call, assuming all the blocks went right I was 6% better off. Though clearly the better approach would have been not to start from there.

Not sure I agree with Stazos on taking -1mv over -1str on a pro elf catcher. Not sure wtf those catchers are ever going to block in Stormbringer division anyhow. In every other circumstance I'd agree though. And either way you'll be looking to replace them eventually.

In other news Caleb the Ripper and Big Nurker (both wolves) finally levelled up.

[eldaec]

Also, while Offsidhes vs Silver Horde was clearly a banner match - don't feel it's impossible to follow us and all postpone your matches till tomorrow or whatever so that we can be the only match of the day. Someone play some blood bowl.

(looks like Scarlet and Gray vs Reborne's Wrestlers is underway)

[avaia]

Offsidhes 1 - 1 Silver Horde

Before I forget to mention it again, Offsidhes is one of the bestest names evar.

[eldaec]

6 matches played.
5 have been Vet vs Noob.

Vets have won 1
Noobs have won 3

 

6 more vet vs noobs matches to go this game day.

[IainC]

Offsidhes 1 - 1 Silver Horde

Before I forget to mention it again, Offsidhes is one of the bestest names evar.

Unless you pronounce it properly. Offshee doesn't have the same ring to it.

[avaia]

It's a visual pleasure, to be sure.

[Reborne]

Hoax by one in a bonehead fueled display against Reborne.

Well done Lamaros, only a few boneheads but prediction came true none the less.

Hoax 2 - 1 Reborne

Amazingly I managed to score first with some impressive (read completely bat shit stupid) foot work from the snotlings.
Hoax had some bad luck in the first half with only K.O.ing most of them so they came back ready for more beatings for their imaginary food.

Second half is a different story.
Hoax equalized with some nice placements and then the blitz came and what a blitz it was.
He kicked to the scrimage line, the blitz let him put his own players under the ball, which one of his blitzers then caught and with so many downed snotlings he just ran the ball down the field.

Fun game, made all the better by chatting the entire time via mumble.

Bring on the Norse! 

[Hoax]

He also threw a snotling with the ball and the snotling landed on his feet even! The game rewarded the ogre with mvp so watch out for Sid Vicious in the future.  I failed to kill all the snotlings or even cause serious damage to any of them really. The orcs couldn't see them good judging from all the failed tackles, I blame the grass being green and the 'lings being green as well. Bring on some blue turf!? The wrestlers also have some kind of special shoe contract or coaching because even the ogres were light on their feet at one point, avoiding tacklers to land a nasty hit on the ball carrier.

All in all quite fun and thank nuffle for the blitz that gifted me the go ahead touchdown.

[Reborne]

I blame the grass being green and the 'lings being green as well.

We were on a boat 

[Strazos]

Not sure I agree with Stazos on taking -1mv over -1str on a pro elf catcher. Not sure wtf those catchers are ever going to block in Stormbringer division anyhow. In every other circumstance I'd agree though. And either way you'll be looking to replace them eventually.

He said runner, so I assumed it was a Norse Runner.

[lamaros]

Negative Capability 2 - 1 Rape of Skabine 1

A really frustrating game on my half, lots of bad play by me and lots of reallllly irritating rolls on the dice.

Won the toss and chose to receive, which was probably an error. Struggled to get the brain in order after getting blitzed the first turn and didn't cover the ball carrier well enough. Played deep in a my half for a little before a wolf managed to blitz his way out of the cage and score. Played super defensive on the next end and ended up spreading myself nervously over the field. Got caught deep again and lost the ball for another turnover and another score.

In the second half it was better, getting a bit more lucky with some KOs and playing much more sure of myself on defense. Managed to lock the ball in well enough and then bust it out for a TD, giving me three more turns to level the game. Dice played nasty with both our nerves, leaving ICE's KO's off the pitch, giving me a 4 player advantage. I was out of rerolls (I think I used 4 from 6 for the match on GFI's or something, a couple that were wasted on double 1's - 6/10 GFIs for me and 7/7 for NEG) and didn't manage to get a knockdown with my early blitz, just pushing him into the cage better. The pressure mounted back and forth before the final round, where the Gods of nuffle showed their hatred for both of us in equal measure.

I misclicked a 2D again't block instead of an attack, but got both down and push instead of anything worse. ICE chose the push to stay bunkered up... before throwing double skulls on his ball carrying wolf as it attempted to blitz out. The ball fell into the hands of my waiting thrower.

On my final turn I had two GR's ready to receive the handoff or pass to score, with two guys on my thrower. I threw down a 2D block to get my blitzer free. Then I was going to throw a 2D block on the zombie holding the thrower from behind, and blitz the other with the guy I had freed up. The first block went well and the blitzer was clear.

I ummed and ahhed, being able to blitz free with my thrower instead if I choose, but decided to go for the two blocks instead. Went first with the blockless one and rolled skull and both down, ending the game.

It was a close tense and exciting game, the luck was down for both of us at times, but ICE fairly won after playing a much better first half.

In other news I managed to injured two players (including a wolf) but they regenerated. Submitted the replay to BBManager.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Who cares about the vets games? Those guys are clearly all washed up! Meanwhile, I just played Lamaros in an exciting newb v. newb matchup. The result:

Negative Capability 2 - 1 over Rape of Skabine.


Very quick summary since I gotta run:

The Necromantic team dominated the first half, after the rats decided they would be better off receiving first. Clearly an error in retrospect, as every TD in the game was the result of defensive play. Negative Capability scored twice in the first half, helped along by some occasionally-sketchy defensive play (first TD) and some fairly punishing luck (second TD, which was run in turn 8 with a reroll-less 3+ pickup and GFI.)

The Necromantic team received in the second half, 2-0 up, and proceeded to just barely avoid giving up a tie in a rather terrifying display of blocking and positioning ineptitude. I'm going to have to look at the replay here, because I don't even remember what went so disastrously wrong, but the end result was the Skaven kicking off to a team of 7 Necromantic players on turn 14, down by only a touchdown (all 4 of my KO'd players failed their wake up roll.) The gods proceeded to taunt Lamaros, repeatedly, as I desperately boxed up around the ball and tried to avoid what seemed inevitable. If you're going to watch only one part of the replay, I'd say turns 14-16 will provide the greatest entertainment.

Overall, I would say I got completely outblocked, and in terms of overall dice I'm guessing it was even -- but Nuffle favoured me when it counted. I didn't score a single CAS, and missed out on a lot of blocking opportunities due to the 2 minute timer and poor order-of-operations thinking. Meanwhile, Lamaros managed to injure two of my players and (as mentioned) KO almost half the team. Regeneration saved several of my players from missing the next game.

[lamaros]

Number of 1's rolled by Ice. Zero.
Number rolled by me. 9.

Yeah.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

I couldn't help a glance at BBManager's stats after all. Lamaros managed to roll NINE 1s on d6 rolls -- I rolled 0. I did roll nine 2s, though, which given my agi 3 team were probably mostly indistinguishable from 1s. Still, Lamaros' distribution was clearly rather dire. I also have a rather amusing stretch of 5 consecutive 2s right near the end of the game, which probably has something to do with my terrible second half.


But then there's the blocking dice. Despite rolling an average of 1.91 dice per block to Lamaros' 1.76, he managed to successfully block almost twice as often as me -- 59% to 31%. Turnovers weren't quite as lopsided (8% to 13%, and on at least one occasion I purposefully took a 'both down' over a push), but I'm glad to see that the numbers appear to confirm my feeling that I sure did an awful lot of Pushing in that game.

[lamaros]

I couldn't help a glance at BBManager's stats after all. Lamaros managed to roll NINE 1s on d6 rolls -- I rolled 0. I did roll nine 2s, though, which given my agi 3 team were probably mostly indistinguishable from 1s. Still, Lamaros' distribution was clearly rather dire. I also have a rather amusing stretch of 5 consecutive 2s right near the end of the game, which probably has something to do with my terrible second half.

But then there's the blocking dice. Despite rolling an average of 1.91 dice per block to Lamaros' 1.76, he managed to successfully block almost twice as often as me -- 59% to 31%. Turnovers weren't quite as lopsided (8% to 13%, and on at least one occasion I purposefully took a 'both down' over a push), but I'm glad to see that the numbers appear to confirm my feeling that I sure did an awful lot of Pushing in that game.

Yeah, but I did 20 blockless blocks, you did 38. I had two turnovers from 2D blocks and you had four. In regards to knockdowns/pushes I had four players with dodge, you had 0. So those stats are closer to par for turnovers and knockdowns that it looks at first glance.

Of course this all ignore the streakiness of it, as you say with your series of 2's. We both had better and worse moments. That's Blood Bowl!

Edit: Just looked at a bit of the reply. Forget the stats, I played very very poorly in the first half.

[Llyse]

Good first match IceCream but ultimately a fail.

0 Gutter runners dead   

My long awaited choke is played in 24 hours 

[lamaros]

Good first match IceCream but ultimately a fail.

0 Gutter runners dead  

My long awaited choke is played in 24 hours  

Yeah what's with that? With my MM team I manage to end the game with about 5-6 players every time, yet win. This time I have a full team on the pitch, but lose? Shit is crazzzzy.

Also I'd rather you save your choke for the game with me. I've got mine out of the way now, but it does mean I'll need to pick up a few point elsewhere to make up for it. Ok?

Also Falc, I've had a few of the 12 player bugs recently in some MM games. I'm assuming we want to set it up so that it this happens in the league we just cancel the game and replay it?

[Megrim]

Hoax by one in a bonehead fueled display against Reborne.

Well done Lamaros, only a few boneheads but prediction came true none the less.

Hoax 2 - 1 Reborne

Amazingly I managed to score first with some impressive (read completely bat shit stupid) foot work from the snotlings.
Hoax had some bad luck in the first half with only K.O.ing most of them so they came back ready for more beatings for their imaginary food.

Second half is a different story.
Hoax equalized with some nice placements and then the blitz came and what a blitz it was.
He kicked to the scrimage line, the blitz let him put his own players under the ball, which one of his blitzers then caught and with so many downed snotlings he just ran the ball down the field.

Fun game, made all the better by chatting the entire time via mumble.

Bring on the Norse!  

Were you guys using the f13 eve mumble?

 * Edit: the sunnyvale.frotz.net one?

[avaia]

Fairly uneventful first match for me.  Had a couple of tense moments when my baby (Sowarg Whitemane) went down, but no long term harm done.  Sowarg is in the middle of a contract dispute.   As such, he is not allowed to score until things get sorted out.  Sowarg was allowed to touch the ball in the second half to complete a pass, but that is it.  Brian the Tyrant looks a bit complacent this year, no casualties inflicted.

Necco 2, Undeadwood 0.

[Celer]

Had a couple of tense moments when my baby (Sowarg Whitemane) went down, but no long term harm done.

I tried, Twilight 2000 Division... I tried.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Good first match IceCream but ultimately a fail.

0 Gutter runners dead   

Well, I tried at least -- I frenzied those guys all over the pitch!

It's funny though, because from a purely game-theory sort of position, I don't actually want to kill his gutter runners. I want to Badly Hurt all of them as often as possible, but the only possible advantage to killing them is if I am otherwise sure that he is my main competition in the division, or if I expect to meet him in the playoffs. If not, I want to leave his team completely intact so that he can kill as many of everyone else's players as possible, so that they are weakened when they play me.

In other words, the only players I actually want to kill are yours. :D

[Falconeer]

All matches validated. You all sent me (or uploaded) your replays, right? Right?

[Reborne]

Were you guys using the f13 eve mumble?

 * Edit: the sunnyvale.frotz.net one?

la1.mumblevoice.com
Port: 64842

It's password protected and I'm not just going to put that on here as I'm not sure who is meant to know it but from what I'm told it is one of the fairly standard passwords around here.

[avaia]

All matches validated. You all sent me (or uploaded) your replays, right? Right?

Yup, uploaded.  It looks like someone's match is in there twice?

[NiX]

la1.mumblevoice.com
Port: 64842

It's password protected and I'm not just going to put that on here as I'm not sure who is meant to know it but from what I'm told it is one of the fairly standard passwords around here.

Standard password? It always changes. Just give it to Falc and he can send it to the mailing list.

[Reborne]

Yup, uploaded.  It looks like someone's match is in there twice?

That would probably be Hoax and I.
We were both figuring out BBManager and my replay is saved a day ahead of his.
If someone else doesn't delete it soon I'll find out how to do so.

[Sky]

Gah, I just get TS3 up and running and you guys change it. Goddamned kids. Make up your minds!

Just sticky the voice server info in the BB subforum.

[Teleku]

So it looks like Llyse and I will be playing later this evening.  Hold me I'm scared!

I can only pray the inducements save me (and that nuffle sides with me and fucks him over, but since I seem to be nuffles favorite bitch boy, not likely).

[Sky]

Going to be a scary night, indeed. I play Comstar's jigglers.

Due to a misunderstanding by the Ozzie on time zone conversions, I may have a chance. He was up and messaging me at 11am f13 time (Mountain?) for a game that was supposed to be 11pm Eastern, I didn't see his message until I got back from lunch at 2pm EST...

Ozzie sleepiness vs Laphroaig!

[Teleku]

Well that went about as expected.  

My crowning achievement is that nobody died.  And yes, I've come to the conclusion that god/nuffle hates elves.

Good game to Llyse though!  He could have stomped my players worst just to be spiteful but he was a gentleman about it.